


write what you know

by bellafarallones



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Writing & Publishing, Dildos, Identity Reveal, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Masturbation, Meet-Ugly, Only One Bed, References to Oviposition, Voice Kink, alternate universe - romance authors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:47:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29091504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellafarallones/pseuds/bellafarallones
Summary: Duck Newton, an author of park ranger-themed romance novels, is assigned to a table at a publishing convention right next to the man who singlehandedly dragged mothman erotica into the mainstream, Indrid Cold. This definitely isn't going to be a big deal.
Relationships: Indrid Cold/Duck Newton
Comments: 25
Kudos: 52





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to everyone in the indruck discord who talked about this au with me!

According to a map of the publishing convention that was printed entirely too small for Duck Newton’s middle-aged eyes, he’d been assigned to a section called  _ Supernatural Romance.  _ He did not write supernatural romance. Most of the paperbacks he was hauling were about park rangers. But the powers-that-be had designated him supernatural romance, and so that was where he was headed. 

He passed signs for historical romance, science fiction romance, fantasy romance… and then, finally, supernatural romance. One of the booths here was draped with a beautifully illustrated banner, INDRID COLD in white calligraphy on a black background with a full-color mothman lounging beneath. And the man sitting behind it, already remarkable as the  _ only  _ man, aside from Duck, in a row of female romance authors -

Of course the man who had singlehandedly dragged mothman erotica into the mainstream would look like  _ that.  _ Handsome, for one thing, with reflective red sunglasses perched on his nose and silver hair you wanted to run your hands through falling to his shoulders. Indrid Cold’s pale lips quirked like he was keeping a secret. 

Duck’s first instinct was to keep a wide berth, if only to preserve his own dignity, but it was not to be. Right next to Indrid Cold’s banner was a sad gray folding table, with a sad plastic folding chair behind it, and a piece of printer paper on the table on which was written DUCK NEWTON. 

It was impossible to avoid Indrid’s gaze as he approached. “How come you get a banner?” Duck grumbled.

Indrid laughed. “I made this myself. I’m Indrid, by the way.” He stuck out his hand.

Duck raised his eyebrows, and gestured to the foot-high letters. “I can see that.”

Indrid’s face fell, and he withdrew his hand. “Oh. Right. Of course.”

Duck slumped into the folding chair and started unpacking his books. Maybe building himself a fortress out of them would make his table look less barren. He also wanted to keep talking to Indrid, but he couldn’t just introduce himself, given that surely Indrid had seen the sign on his table as well. Not that Indrid would know him by reputation in the same way he knew Indrid. 

“I, uh. I like your work,” Duck tried after he’d built a satisfactory wall of paperbacks.

“Yeah?” said Indrid. “I like yours as well. Though now I’ve met you, it seems in retrospect like self-insert.”

“What?” All of Duck’s love interests were good-looking beefcakes, not fortysomething perpetual bachelors with what could generously be called a “dad bod.”

Indrid opened his mouth to say more, but at that moment a middle-aged woman came up to Duck’s table. “Mr. Newton!” she said.

“Hi,” said Duck awkwardly. 

“I got into birding because of your books,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of fun doing it.”

“Glad to hear it.”

She produced a magazine from her purse. “Will you sign my copy of Bird Watcher’s Digest? Anywhere is fine.”

Duck dug in his bag for a pen and signed his name carefully in the blank space beside the table of contents. 

“Thank you,” the woman said, and went away again.

Indrid had been watching this interaction with some interest. “You don’t even write that much about birding,” he commented.

Duck bristled. His first real compliment from a reader, the first time he’d heard that his work had impacted someone’s life, and Indrid was trying to invalidate it? But he didn’t get a chance to respond, because a man had approached and was pulling out his wallet. 

“Hello,” Duck said politely.

“My wife loves your work.” He chuckled. “Makes me jealous sometimes. What’s your newest one? It’s her birthday soon and I’d rather not spend it in the doghouse this year.”

Duck picked up a copy of  _ New Love for New Year’s.  _ “This one just came out in December.” 

“I’ll take it.” The man handed him a crumpled twenty. 

“Do you want me to sign it, or anything?”

“Yeah, can you make it out to Melinda?” 

Duck wrote  _ To Melinda  _ on the title page, signed, and handed the man his book and his change. 

A young person with a purple undercut had approached Indrid’s booth and stood nervously in front of the banner. “Hi, I - I really love all your stuff, uh, a lot.”

“Happy to hear it.” Indrid was leaning on his elbow, smiling, seeming perfectly at ease with this deeply uncomfortable interaction.

“Can I buy a copy of  _ Wings of Fate?” _

“Sure. Do you have a minute? I’ll draw you a mothman if you want.”

“Really?” Their face lit up. “I’d love that.”

Indrid took a copy of the book off the stack and opened it, humming. There were about a dozen Sharpies of different colors on the table next to him, and he picked up a thin black one and scratched out the outline of wings, broad enough to cover most of the title page. 

“I, uh,” said the person as they watched him draw. “I love how your books portray alienation from society. Like, it’s fundamentally tragic, but not in the way most people expect it to be. It’s not that being different inherently causes suffering, it’s the loneliness.”

“Mhm,” said Indrid. He didn’t look up, just kept summoning the texture of feathers in black and brown, set off by round red eyes. Of course he could draw just as spectacularly well as he could write.

“Like, humans are meant to feel connected to each other. That’s what I feel like your work is all about.  _ Connection.” _

“Do you want me to put a name?”

“Oh, uh, no, that’s okay.”

Indrid blew on the wet ink and scribbled something beneath it. Then he held out the book. “I’m so glad I got to meet you,” he said sincerely.

“Thank you,” said the person, sounding awestruck. “I’m so glad I got to meet you, too.”

Duck wanted to vomit. That person was probably going to remember this interaction for years, and tell all their friends about what a great guy Indrid Cold was, and treasure that mothman drawing. 

He wondered if he bought a copy of one of Indrid’s books, he’d draw a mothman for him, too. 

The rest of the convention went by in much the same way. Duck took a break at noon to go eat lunch, but Indrid stayed, mainlining candy from a seemingly infinite supply underneath his booth. By five Duck had sold most of the books he’d come with and Indrid had drawn a couple more mothmen for equally adoring fans. 

“Do you want to go get dinner?” said Duck absentmindedly as Indrid folded his banner. Indrid turned around suddenly, and Duck’s face flushed as he realized what he’d said. “Not - uh - not like that. Just. Y’know. Actually, nevermind.”

“Oh,” said Indrid. “Alright.”

They went their separate ways, then, and Duck ate alone in the Ruby Tuesday’s attached to the hotel. 

Indrid’s books were  _ good,  _ that was the thing. He always managed to strike the right tone of making his relationships intense without being uncomfortable, and the porn was so hot that fragments of it floated back to the forefront of Duck’s mind for weeks after he’d read it. So yeah, Duck was a little starstruck, and better to be prickly than embarrass himself fanboying. 

After he finished his soup and paid and was walking out of the restaurant, silver hair at the bar caught his eye. Against his better judgement he walked over. 

“Hello, Duck,” said Indrid. There was an empty glass in front of him and a couple of maraschino-cherry stems on a cocktail napkin. “Care to join me?”

Duck sat down next to him. The bartender came over. “Can I get you anything?” he said to Duck. And then, to Indrid - “Another Shirley Temple?”

“Can I just have water and some of those peanuts?” said Duck.

“Yes please,” said Indrid.

For a moment they sat together in silence, Duck crunching on peanuts, Indrid contemplating his sugar-water. 

“You write mothman giving a hell of a lot of blowjobs given all the really big real moths don’t even have mouths in their adult forms,” Duck said finally.

Indrid stiffened. “Mothman has a mouth that can give blowjobs.”

“I’m just saying, it’s not realistic. And don’t even get me  _ started  _ on what real moth genitalia looks like.”

Indrid’s mouth worked silently for a moment. “At least I don’t go off on long digressions about plants every other chapter.”

“Talking about plants helps build an immersive world!”

“And puts off getting to the good part.”

Duck didn’t have a good counter-argument for that one. Indrid’s sex scenes came early and frequently. “At least my books aren’t all as formulaic as yours are!” 

Every single one of Indrid’s published works featured the mothman, and most followed roughly the same plot: the human hero encounters the mothman, perhaps finding him injured in the woods and nursing him back to health, and then they fall in love, or, more accurately, in lust. The endings were always bittersweet, with the human going back to their normal life and the mothman flapping off into the night after promising never to forget each other. 

“People like it,” said Indrid. “What can I say?”

They went on this vein for some time, nitpicking each other’s plots. Indrid seemed to have read every single one of Duck’s park ranger romances, which Duck found genuinely surprising. Too fast, it was one in the morning, later than Duck had stayed up in months. “I really think you peaked with  _ A Mirror in the Darkness.” _

“You read that one?” said Indrid. “I’m surprised, it only ever sold five hundred copies.”

Fuck. “Uh. N - yeah? Maybe?”  _ A Mirror in the Darkness  _ was at least a decade old, now, and about three times as long as anything else Indrid had published. It was also his only story from the mothman’s perspective. Normally the mothman was somewhat one-dimensional, an idealized lover, but this iteration felt viscerally real, fearful of humanity’s encroach on the wilderness and conscious of the scale of the world and his own smallness in it. Duck had cried when he got to the end of it. 

Indrid looked down into his glass. “My favorite book of yours is  _ Wild Woods. _ ”

“Of course it would be.”  _ Wild Woods  _ contained the most extreme sex scene he’d ever written, a threesome between two rangers and a park visitor. “...what part did you like best?” 

“The breakfast date at the end. Splitting an omelet while the sun rises is just so romantic.” Indrid raised his eyebrows. Duck couldn’t couldn’t look away from the sharp planes of his face. “What were you expecting me to say?”

That was a surprise. Indrid’s books rarely featured much in the way of traditional romance. Duck shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m going to bed.”

Indrid nodded. “I should, too.”

They walked together across the lobby. “What floor?” said Duck when they got into the elevator.

“Five,” said Indrid after he’d dug a room key in a paper envelope out of his bag. 

“Me too.”

“I bet the publisher bought the rooms as a set. We might be next to each other.”

They got out of the elevator, and Duck counted rooms until he got to 527. Indrid stopped right behind him. “Hello?” Duck said. “Aren’t you going to your own room?”

Indrid held up his card. There, written in pen on the paper envelope, was the number 527. 

“Fuck,” said Duck. He swiped his own card, and the door flashed green and unlocked. Then, even louder - “Fuck!” There was only one bed. 

“Not one of Joseph’s better cost-saving ideas, I must admit,” said Indrid dryly. 

“Did you know about this!?”

“No. But the last time I went to one of these conventions I had to sleep in the rental car, so I’m not too upset.”

“Fuck,” said Duck as he dumped his suitcase next to the desk. “I should call the concierge and ask for a rollaway.” But it was one in the morning, and he was very tired. And so he dug in his suitcase and pulled out his pajamas and his toiletries bag and stumbled into the bathroom. 

When he came out, with his teeth brushed and his pajamas on, Indrid was lying on the bed, fully-dressed except for his shoes, staring at the ceiling. 

Duck decided it wasn’t worth it to comment. Instead he climbed into bed next to Indrid and tried to go to sleep. But he could hear the gentle rhythm of Indrid’s breathing, see Indrid’s gorgeous profile silhouetted against the lamp on the bedside table, and his eyes stayed open.

“You keep looking at me,” said Indrid softly. He didn’t sound bothered, just stating a fact.

“Yeah?” Duck grumbled. “You’re good-looking.”

Indrid turned his head, looking genuinely surprised. “Really? Have you looked in a mirror recently?”

Rolling over put Duck’s face an inch from Indrid’s.

“I feel like we got off on the wrong foot today,” Indrid continued. This close Duck could see his gaze beneath his glasses dart from Duck’s eyes to his lips. 

“Shame about that,” said Duck, and kissed him. Indrid made a little  _ oh  _ sound and kissed back, mouth slipping open.

Duck pulled back to yawn. “Sorry.” Indrid just shook his head. “Okay, now I’m going to sleep for real.” Duck rolled back to his own half of the bed and closed his eyes, felt the mattress creak as Indrid got up and padded across the room. And then he felt nothing. 

The next thing Duck saw was sunlight. What? 

There was silver hair in his face and skinny arms wrapped around him. Indrid. Indrid’s face pressed to his chest. He’d kissed Indrid. 

The clock on the bedside table read 8:47. Fuck. Slowly, Duck pulled himself free. Even in sleep Indrid instinctively clung to his glasses, keeping them pressed to his face, leaving red indentations in his cheek. Duck’s heart hurt to look at him, half-wrapped in blankets, shirt riding up a little on his narrow torso. He wanted to get back into bed and kiss him awake and maybe stay there forever. But no, he didn’t have time to think about that; he had a flight home to catch. 

Very quietly, Duck got a change of clothes out of his suitcase and, very quietly, went into the bathroom to put them on. Then he stuffed everything else back into his suitcase, took one last look around the room to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind, and eased the door shut behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

Duck didn’t have a chance to catch his breath until he was on the plane. Squished into the window seat, he felt the ghost of Indrid’s arms around him and realized he’d made a terrible mistake. Fuck. He definitely should have left a note, left his number, left  _ something  _ so Indrid would know Duck hadn’t just ditched him for the hell of it.

As soon as the wheels of the plane hit the tarmac in Huntington, Duck had his phone out and was texting Joseph, his editor.  _ Can you tell Indrid Cold I’m sorry? _

_ Do I get any context on this?  _ Joseph wrote back.

_ Please just tell him. I don’t have his number. _

The plane taxied and came to a halt without a response. The fasten-seatbelt sign turned off, but Duck was so far to the back of the plane he knew it’d be another fifteen minutes before he got off. 

Finally another message from Joseph.  _ Is this a bad time to tell you the higher-ups really want you and him to collaborate on a book? _

_ I can’t do that,  _ Duck wrote back. He’d never co-written a book before, and he didn’t want to have to try to be professional with someone he apparently only got along with when they stopped talking about work and started kissing. 

_ They’re talking about a hundred thousand dollar advance, Duck. For each of you.  _

Fuck.

\--

“Duck?”

Still half-asleep, Indrid groped across the bed. The sheets were cool. And when he opened his eyes, he saw that Duck’s suitcase was gone from where it had lain. 

Indrid dragged his palms down his cheeks and tried not to cry. In the course of twenty-four-hours he’d found out that Duck Newton was just as dreamy as any of his characters, that he sold more books than Indrid had without even trying,  _ and  _ that he was a good kisser. 

Not that any of it mattered. Unlike Duck, or the characters in his books, Indrid Cold was not boyfriend material. He was alright to fuck for a while, yeah, but then normal people went back to their normal lives where he couldn’t follow. He knew how it happened. He’d written it almost as often as he’d lived it.

Still, now, with the pillows still smelling like Duck, hot tears forced their way through. Indrid took his glasses off, numbing himself with a body that couldn’t cry, and comforted himself by wrapping his wings around him and pulling the blankets back over all of him, a mothman-shaped lump.

\--

Duck made it home in one piece, exhausted by the long drive home from the airport. His cat greeted him at the door, winding around his ankles to trip him as he carried his suitcase inside, and meowed loudly until he got out the can opener to feed her her dinner. 

“Oh, be quiet, Annie,” Duck said affectionately, scratching the back of her head. “Leo sent me pictures, I know you were perfectly happy with him looking after you.”

Satisfied that she would forgive him eventually for his long absence, Duck stripped and collapsed into bed. He groped for the book on his bedside table before he remembered what it was: _Mated in Monongahela_ by Indrid Cold. He’d googled it, and Monongahela was the only currently operational state park-type thing in West Virginia whose name started with an M. The name was a coincidence. 

It was significantly more intense than Indrid’s normal style. The heroine gets lost in the woods - the park ranger in Duck cringed at that part - and is rescued/kidnapped by the mothman, who keeps her in a cave and lays eggs in her. 

The book fell open in Duck’s hand to the place where the spine creased, to the page he’d returned to more than he’d like to admit.

_ His long tongue, smoother than a human’s would be, dragged up the side of her neck, and her hands tightened in his feathers. She could feel him hard against her, and she wanted him despite herself. How nice would it be to forget about the world and allow herself to be used.  _

_ “I need you,” the mothman groaned. “I knew as soon as I saw you that you’d be the perfect brood-mother, you’re so warm, so perfect. Just let me fill you up, I’ll take care of you, I’ll do anything -” _

Duck slammed the book shut. He’d always imagined the mothman’s voice as low and gravelly, but today his imagination supplied something smooth and lilting. Indrid’s voice. Indrid’s voice saying those filthy things. And then he remembered the breathy noises Indrid had made when Duck had kissed him, imagined hearing those same noises folded in the mothman’s embrace, and -

Duck threw the book back onto his bedside table and shut off the light. Slowly, then, wide-awake in the darkness, his hand found its way between his legs. He was  _ dripping.  _

\-- 

Indrid was curled up on his couch in a position that would make a chiropractor break out in hives with a yellow legal pad propped against his knee. The story he was working on now featured a small-town man (middle-aged, unlucky in love, and ropey with muscle from a life of physical labor) whose confidence in his own strength led him to challenge the mothman to a wrestling match. 

The wager the human suggested was  _ loser gets fucked,  _ and the mothman lost, leading to a rather excellent scene of the mothman on his knees. Of course, the human realized that the mothman had lost on purpose when he easily wrestled him to the ground in a later scene. Indrid was still trying to come up with a compelling reason for the second wrestling match when the phone rang.

“Hello?” he said.

_ “Hey, uh, it’s Duck.”  _

“Good to hear from you.” Indrid pressed the phone between his shoulder and his ear and started doodling in the margins. “What’s up?”

“ _ So, uh, I just wanted to say I’m sorry.” _

“Don’t worry about it.” Indrid’s pen pressed hard enough into the page to leave an indent. It had stung a little that Duck hadn’t bothered to tell him himself just how much he regretted kissing him, but at least he hadn’t totally ghosted him. 

_ “Joseph gave me your number. We’re supposed to be working together on something?” _

“Ah, yes.” Indrid flipped a few pages, back to the notes he’d made when Joseph had first told him. “A park ranger meets the mothman, perhaps?”

_ “Okay, mothman isn’t gonna be in it.” _

Indrid’s pen froze. He couldn’t - he - did Duck really find mothman that unappealing?

_ “Indrid? You there?” _

“Nobody would read Indrid Cold without the mothman.”

_ “That ain’t true, I know I would. Look, the reason I don’t want the mothman in it is because… that’s your whole thing. I want us to do something new.” _

Indrid cursed how weak he was to Duck’s earnestness. “Fine. What’s your favorite supernatural creature?”

_ “How about centaurs?” _

Indrid thought for a moment. Centaurs resembled horses so closely that most sex acts with them would edge too close to bestiality for his comfort. “Dragons?”

_ “Oh, yeah, I like that. Maybe some kind of forest guardian-type dragon?” _

“Perfect for a park ranger.” Indrid’s doodle turned into a row of spines.

_ “We don’t have to do a park ranger. If I’m making you not do mothman.” _

“No, that’s alright. Park rangers are sexy.”

Over the next half-hour they agreed on the scaffold of a plot: a forest dragon who’d stayed hidden for centuries dares to show himself in order to lead a park ranger, someone who’s worked in the forest for long enough that the dragon trusts him, to an injured animal. Their friendship deepens as the ranger indulges the dragon’s long-repressed curiosity about humankind. 

“If you give me your address I can mail you my notes and a draft of the first chapter by the end of the week,” said Indrid. 

_ “What? By snail mail?” _

“I do all my writing longhand.” Easier to write one-handed that way.

_ “Alright, that’s not gonna work. Indrid, I have a full-time job, and Joseph only gave us a month to come up with a first draft.” _

“Where do you live, again?”

_ “Kepler.” _

“I live in an RV, so it wouldn’t be too much trouble for me to move to Kepler for a month to work together in person.”

_ “You’d do that?” _

“Of course. Does Monongahela have any good cheap campgrounds?”

_ “Sure. Might even be able to swing you a friends-and-family discount. You’re not allergic to cats, are you?” _

\--

Duck had spent the time he would have spent making dinner talking to Indrid, and by the time he finally got off the phone he was so starving he immediately got in the car and went to the Wendy’s drive-through. 

He was waiting in line when the weight of what he’d just agreed to sunk in. Indrid would be here. In Kepler. And Duck would have to cultivate a  _ business  _ relationship, rather than the relationship he really wanted to cultivate.

After Duck collected his food he pulled into a remote corner of the parking lot and cranked down the windows. Before he started eating he dialed Joseph’s number, put his phone on speaker, and balanced it on the dashboard. 

_ “You’re lucky we’re having late dinner tonight,”  _ said Joseph after three rings.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m eating Wendy’s right now, by the way, so sorry in advance for the gross mouth noises.”

Joseph let out a wistful sigh.  _ “I haven’t had Wendy’s in so long.” _

“Isn’t your husband a chef?”

_ “Yes, so I never get a chance to eat junk anymore. Are you a burger man or do you like the chili?” _

“Chili.” Duck eased the plastic lid off his cup of soup, releasing a cloud of fragrant steam.

_ “Me too. Anyway, not that it isn’t a pleasure to talk fast food, but why’d you call?” _

“I sort of accidentally invited Indrid to Kepler to work together face-to-face. Or he invited himself? I don’t know. He’s coming.”

_ “That sounds like it will make it much more convenient to work on the book you’re co-writing.” _

“Yeah, but it means I’ll have to  _ see  _ him. In person.”

_ “What’s the deal with you and Indrid?” _

“I fucked up.”

_ “Yeah? Did you sleep with him?” _

Duck paused. “We didn’t have sex.”

_ “Did he  _ tell _ you he was mad at you?” _

“No.”

_ “Did you ask him a bunch of personal questions?” _

Duck thought back. “No.”

_ “Then you’re good! Indrid’s not the type to get upset.” _

Duck said nothing, stabbing at his bowl of chili with the plastic spoon. 

_ “Literally the only thing he’ll mind is if you pry into his past.”  _ Joseph took a deep breath. “ _ He was one of my first clients, back when I was just getting started as an editor, and he put up with all kinds of shit from me. Delayed advances, basically no effective marketing for his books… he didn’t care. We even hooked up a couple of times when he came to New York - this was before I met Barclay - and it was all fine.” _

“So what happened?”

Joseph sighed.  _ “I got curious. Nothing about him makes sense: where’s he from? How old is he? What was he doing before he started writing mothman porn? You know, according to his driver’s license he was born in 1953.” _

Duck did the math in his head. “No.”

_ “I know, right? And he lives in this shitty campground outside Point Pleasant, has for as long as I’ve known him. Does all his banking at a tiny local bank there; I shudder to imagine the ATM fees he must have to pay whenever he travels.” _

Duck didn’t really care about banking. “He is not sixty-eight years old.”

Joseph paused, then spoke in a low voice, as though afraid of being overheard.  _ “Here’s my theory. I think his legal identity isn’t really him. What if he was born somewhere his parents didn’t get him a real birth certificate? Like, what if his parents were in a cult, or some of those weird Mormon fundamentalists who live out in the woods?” _

Duck was silent for a moment, chewing on a spoonful of chili.

_ “Being paranoid about some cult coming back for him would explain a lot. Or, and I don’t want to be too dramatic here, if he had to do something drastic to get out, and now he’s worried about the law.” _

“Have you asked him about it?”

_ “Yeah, I did. Confronted him about how his ID makes no sense and how weird it is that no records of him exist anywhere, no school records, nothing. He lost his shit. Told me to stop stalking him and that he never wanted to see me again. Never tried to find a new editor, though, which surprised me. But he won’t let me within five feet of him anymore. It’s like he thinks I’m gonna hit him or something.” _

“Alright. I’ll be sure not to ask him any personal questions.”

_ “But if he tells you anything, please pass it along. I’m dying to know.” _

“Christ, Joseph, you should be working for the FBI.”

_ “Sometimes I think I missed my calling. Anyway, it’s dinnertime, so I’ve gotta go. Talk to you soon?” _

“Talk to you soon.” Duck’s phone beeped as Joseph hung up. Alright. No personal questions. He could do this. 


	3. Chapter 3

The harsh fluorescent lights of the convention center had not done Indrid justice. Now he sat illuminated by the warm glow of the lamp on Duck’s desk, resting his chin on his hand, soft sweater draped around his shoulders, and it took all of Duck’s self control not to say something stupid.

Fuck. Indrid was looking expectantly at him. “Hm?”

“I said, what do you think?” Indrid was holding up a drawing of a dragon.

“Oh, yeah, good, looks great.” Only after Duck had said it did he realize it was true. The dragon’s scales had the textures of the forest, rough bark on his back and leaves on his belly. This was Iseult, the dragon love interest. “How did you learn to draw?”

Fuck. No personal questions. Was that a personal question?

“Lots and lots of practice. How’d you learn to write?” 

“I needed the escapism in high school.” 

Indrid nodded. “I… used to work in… I suppose you would call it communications. I had to convince people of things.” 

Duck imagined Indrid trying to write marketing emails. “You seem to have gone a little far afield.” 

Indrid shrugged. “The principle is the same. Now I'm just convincing people that they’d really like to fall in love with the mothman.” 

“Convinced me pretty well.” 

“Thank you.” Indrid shuffled pages, pulling a yellow legal pad out of his bag. “I know we didn’t talk about it, but I wrote… sort of a first date.”

Duck took the pad. Indrid’s handwriting took some effort to make out. “A jigsaw puzzle? In the woods?”

“There’s a limited number of dates you can go on if one partner can’t be seen in public.”

This was true. The mothman, in Indrid’s books, didn’t really go on  _ dates.  _ There were long conversations in the woods, visiting the protagonist at home under cover of darkness, and sex. 

But their park-ranger hero, Tristan, had brought a puzzle and a puzzle board into the woods. A nice puzzle, one of the wooden ones with laser-cut pieces, and Indrid had included a generous description of how the pieces felt in Tristan’s hands, the satisfying way they fit together. “Are you into puzzles?” said Duck. He could see perfectly what Indrid was describing, Iseult leaning way down to see what he was doing, manipulating tiny pieces with his huge claws, tail swishing like a cat as he concentrated.

“Yeah,” said Indrid. “Doing something with my hands helps me think.”

“We should do one together sometime.”

It took Indrid a moment to reply. “I don’t expect you to spend time with me beyond working on this.”

Duck hated the reluctance in Indrid’s voice. “Can we talk about what happened at the convention?” 

“If you’d like.” Indrid did not sound enthusiastic.

“I’m sorry. I know I’ve said it before but I’m sorry. I had a flight to catch and so that’s why I left but I should have woken you up to say goodbye or left a note or  _ something _ .” Indrid said nothing. Duck wanted to ask him how he felt, but if Indrid wasn’t interested in him, there was nothing he could do.

Indrid took a deep breath. “Do you want to divide up who’s going to write what?”

Duck turned back to his computer to look at the outline he’d made. “I think you should take the lead on the sex scenes, given your skill in that area.”

“You flatter me. Can you do a bit at the beginning about the majesty of the forest and all that?”

“Shouldn’t be too hard.”

After they’d divvied up the book, Duck set to work typing up what Indrid had already written, and Indrid started writing more. Duck noticed the differences between Indrid’s first draft and his published work at once: lots of spelling mistakes, for one thing, and there were significantly more sensory details in the first draft. Did Indrid experience the world with so much vividness? If Joseph was the one who cut all of it out Duck was going to have to give him a piece of his mind.

_ “Do dragons really have hoards?” said Tristan carefully as he watched Iseult consider the front of the puzzle-box. _

_ Iseult nodded without looking up. _

_ “Where do you keep yours?” _

_ Iseult gestured at the trees around them. “My hoard is the forest. Hoard is the human word for it, of course, you don’t have a term for the kind of stewardship we feel.” He paused, considering Tristan with his cool green eyes. “Something you and I have in common, I think? Stewardship?” _

_ Stewardship was protecting the forest to pass it along to one’s children, allowing the trees to fall in their time and rot to become new trees. Yes, stewardship was a park ranger’s job description. _

Duck looked furtively up at Indrid, who was scribbling furiously on another pad of paper. Even Duck had never so explicitly articulated in a romance novel why national parks exist. But Indrid did not meet his eye. 

Once Duck had finished transcribing the puzzle scene, he started writing the first scene he’d been assigned, and looked up when he heard Indrid tearing pages out of his pad. “Here,” said Indrid, passing them over. “It’s from Iseult’s perspective when they start becoming friends. Chapter two.”

A lot of this page was crossed-out and scribbled over, but Duck caught a few sentences.  _ Iseult didn’t know a lot about humans, but if they were all as handsome as this one, they must be a very attractive species indeed. And he didn’t know what to do. He hoped beyond hope that more-than-friends was a thing they could be, but he also didn’t want to make Tristan uncomfortable or scare him off.  _

“I was wondering,” said Indrid carefully, “if as long as I’m here in Kepler I could see some of the real-life inspiration behind Duck Newton’s famous romantic date spots?”

“And would you like a tour guide? Or, uh, I can just give you a list, I’m sure you can figure it out-”

“If a tour guide would consent to join me, I’d be delighted.”

\--

It was earlier than Indrid usually woke up, and he and Duck were sitting at a wood-grain laminate table in an establishment called the Shoreline Cafe despite the lack of a shoreline anywhere nearby. Indrid drank in the details of the place, the little glass bottle of syrup on the table, the ceramic box with paper packets of sugar and sweeter, a neat stack of containers of jam. The laminated menu was slightly sticky, printed with photographs of the different dishes on offer: photogenic cheeseburgers, oozing boats of chili-cheese fries, milkshakes topped with whipped cream and cherries, golden-brown pancakes and waffles. 

This was where the heroes of  _ Wild Woods  _ had breakfast together in the final scene of the book, where they’d decided it was too early in the morning for a milkshake but promised each other they’d return and get one with two straws. That, in Indrid’s opinion, was the most romantic thing of all. Having a future beyond the end of the book.

When he’d gotten a message from Joseph saying that Duck was sorry, he’d assumed that it was… regret. Joseph certainly hadn’t specified. But what Duck had said the other day suggested that Indrid had misinterpreted, that Duck was sorry not for kissing him but for  _ leaving. _

And now, much as Indrid hoped for a repeat performance, it was too late. They were supposed to be working together.

The waitress arrived with her order pad and pen. Duck ordered an omelet with sausage and bacon and Indrid ordered chocolate-chip pancakes and a chocolate milkshake - he disagreed with Duck’s characters that there was such a thing as an inappropriate hour for a milkshake. 

“How are we going to end?” Indrid said quietly when the waitress went away.

“Got any ideas about what a dragon wedding ceremony might look like?” said Duck. 

Indrid blinked. “Really?”

“I get you don’t like commitment, but I feel like that’s where they’re heading.”

“I don’t not like commitment.” It would be more accurate to say that commitment didn’t like  _ him. _ His last real relationship had been with Joseph, whom he had liked very much - still liked, if he was being honest with himself - but Joseph was too inquisitive, too unwilling to let sleeping dogs lie, and the risk was unacceptably high that he’d find out the truth and then be unable to resist writing a tell-all or selling the story to the National Enquirer. “It’s just - it’s impossible to have a long-term relationship that relies on clandestine meetings in the forest.”

“Depends on your occupation. Park ranger is a good one. An artist or a writer or someone who can work from a cabin in the middle of nowhere - like, c’mon, tell me you don’t have enough free unsupervised hours to carry on a relationship with the mothman if you felt like it?”

“Uh,” said Indrid. He had enough free unsupervised hours to  _ be  _ the mothman. 

“Or a retired person! Or a really rich person! Not everyone even  _ has  _ a job.”

The waitress returned with their food, and Indrid drowned his pancakes in a lake of syrup. He’d mostly gotten the hang of human food over the years, though he still had very narrow tastes, and didn’t understand some of the things humans chose to ingest.

When he was done with the pancakes he scraped leftover syrup off the plate and licked it off the side of the fork, until he caught Duck watching him and put the fork down, embarrassed. He must have been doing something wrong without realizing it; he never could keep track of human table manners. Duck didn’t say anything, though, and looked away when Indrid tried to meet his eye.

“Speaking of convenient human occupations,” Duck said, “I had to get up a tree the other day and I was thinking about just how convenient it’d be to have a dragon to give me a boost… thinking about Tristan and Iseult makes me wish  _ I _ had a monster boyfriend.”

“Yeah.” Indrid laughed a little uncomfortably. Duck could reach across the table and take Indrid’s hand and get himself a boyfriend who could fly him into a tree easy as pie. But of course, Duck didn’t know that. 

The waitress arrived with the check, and Indrid reached for it, but Duck got there first. “My treat,” he said. “You did ask for the full Duck Newton date experience.”

Fuck, he wished this was a date.

Indrid returned to the Winnebago to find a package waiting for him. He ripped it open immediately on the kitchen table, revealing a silicone dildo with a sharply tapered head and scales on the shaft. 

Duck had asked him to take the lead on writing the sex scenes, and thus this dragon dildo was a business expense. He double-checked that the door was locked and the blinds were closed, and then yanked his pants off and got into bed. With the dildo on the blanket next to him, Indrid fingered himself open, slowly, eyes closed. Tried to imagine he was in the middle of the woods. Being on the ground wouldn’t do at all, no, Tristan would do this lying on Iseult’s cool chest.

If he was really lying on a dragon’s chest right now, mottled light and shadow by the sun through the leaves, what would he want that dragon to say to him? Praise his little human for being so accommodating - no, for putting on such a good show? Yes, that was it. 

Indrid allowed his legs to fall further apart for the benefit of his imaginary audience. Then he squirted lube into his palm, stroked the toy until it was shiny with it, and eased the tip inside himself. He hadn’t touched his dick, wanting to make this last, but he was already hard and dripping. 

The fantasy changed without Indrid’s permission. Much as he liked dragons, it would be better to do this with warm hands on his skin and an Appalachian drawl in his ear. But as far as Indrid could tell, the odds of getting fucked by an actual dragon were better than  _ that  _ particular fantasy being fulfilled.

Indrid shoved the dildo deeper and dragged his mind back to his work. 


	4. Chapter 4

Indrid had been in Kepler for two weeks, and Duck had gotten a lot better at reading his handwriting. Now Indrid lay on Duck’s bed and wrote as Duck transcribed, speaking up occasionally. “Do you have any suggestions for the sex scenes?” Indrid said.

“Huh.” Duck turned around, taking the opportunity to stretch his wrists. “Play up the size difference? I’d love to have someone bigger and stronger than me just… pin me down and fuck me.”

Why was Indrid blushing so much? He was small and skinny, not in a position to be pinning anyone anywhere. Did he also fantasize about someone stronger? Duck was going to have to start doing push-ups. 

But Indrid didn’t elaborate. “Good idea, thank you.”

Duck turned back to the computer. He was typing up a scene now where Tristan offered to rectify Iseult’s ignorance about the human body: Iseult asking to see him unclothed, Tristan removing his shirt, the dark hair on his soft chest - what? 

Duck skimmed further down the page. The rest of it was good,  _ hot,  _ Iseult lowering his head to Tristan’s eye-level for a closer look, asking if he could touch, promising to be very, very gentle, but Duck couldn’t get past the chest hair thing. “Indrid.”

“Hm?” Indrid looked up.

“We can’t talk about Tristan having chest hair.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s not sexy. Nobody likes body hair.”

“I have a lot of pinup calendars from the seventies that say otherwise.”

“In the seventies people put orange carpet in their living rooms.”

Indrid closed his sketchbook and slid off the bed. “Take your shirt off.”

“What?”

“Take your shirt off so I can prove it.”

Duck, more out of curiosity than anything else, obeyed. Indrid pulled him up from his chair by the arm and spun him until they were facing the full-length mirror on the back of the door. “Look. Is that not the pinnacle of sexiness?”

Duck looked at Indrid’s reflection next to his own, his silver hair in an untidy ponytail, his tight jeans and oversized sweater, and met the eyes behind those red sunglasses. “Yep. Pinnacle of sexiness.”

Indrid laughed. “You’re not going to distract me with flattery.” Now he pushed until Duck sat down on the bed and Indrid was standing between his legs, petting his chest. “See? It flatters your pectorals, and your stomach, and…”

“Uh-huh,” said Duck, now far too distracted to argue, especially as Indrid’s hands skated closer to his belt.

“See! You get it!” Indrid was silent a moment, then blinked and pulled his hands off Duck’s skin as quickly as though he’d been burned. “And I am… in your lap… touching you. I’m so sorry, this is so inappropriate of me -” and he tried to back away, but Duck held his arm.

“Nuh-uh. I think you need to keep making your case that someone could find a body like mine attractive.”

Indrid studied Duck’s face carefully, and then broke into a hungry smile. “Hm, well, I can be very persuasive when I need to be.” Then he leaned in and kissed him. And  _ fuck _ , it was even better than Duck remembered, Indrid’s lips warm against his, Indrid’s tongue. When Indrid pulled away it was an eternity too soon. “Convinced yet?”

Duck groaned. “What do I need to say to get you to keep doing that?”

“That -” Indrid punctuated his words with more kisses “-you’ll let me give Tristan body hair because it’s a very attractive thing for a man to have.”

“Alright, but if Joseph disagrees I’m telling him it was your idea.”

“Joseph will not object. Have you met his husband?”

“True.” Duck dared to touch Indrid’s cheek, and Indrid leaned into it, turned his head to press his lips to Duck’s fingers. 

Indrid was the one to break the silence, after he’d pulled away from Duck’s hand. “We should get back to work.”

“Right.” Duck removed his hands from Indrid’s body. He wanted so badly to keep touching him, to press him into the mattress and kiss him senseless. “Work.”

Indrid looked at him for another moment. Then he picked up his paper and pen again and bent his head to monster romance.

\--

Indrid knew one thing above all else: It was becoming more difficult by the day to maintain even a semblance of a professional relationship with Duck Newton. Today he’d felt him up and kissed him, and he wouldn’t do it again, but now he knew what it was  _ like,  _ and that memory would never leave him.

The only way to not have to maintain a professional relationship with Duck Newton was to finish the book. Then they’d just be two people, and there was nothing to stop Indrid from flirting his way into a place in Duck’s heart and Duck’s bed with Duck’s strong arms around him.

To that end, Indrid had been writing nonstop all afternoon. He forced the words out, not caring that they were terrible, Duck could fix them, he’d noticed already that Duck fixed his spelling mistakes as he transcribed, because he spelled like a Sylph goddamnit, the language of Silvain didn’t have  _ homonyms  _ -

His pen sputtered and stopped, coughing one last blot of ink onto the page. Fuck. The pause made him realize his hand was cramping, and this whole endeavor was  _ useless,  _ Duck might not be interested in him anyway, especially if he didn’t write well enough _ ,  _ and Indrid tore the page out and crumpled it and threw it across the room. 

Panic rose in him like too-rapid tide, and he pulled his glasses off with shaking fingers. 

It was easier, in his original body. He didn’t feel too small, too vulnerable without an exoskeleton to protect him. And he could soothe himself by combing his claws through his feathers, could distract himself by focusing on all the new smells that drifted across his antennae: the faint exhaust smell of the Winnebago’s weeks-unused engine and the metallic odor of gasoline and the eggnog in the fridge and the residue of many microwave. 

Now his body was a boat inverted, an ocean of hemolymph contained within a chitinous hull, fluids not forced through narrow tubes but free to flow. 

Indrid stretched his wings - when it got dark enough he could fly above the treetops, gorge himself on night air - and settled down on the couch again. It didn’t matter, really, whether Duck liked him or not. He’d survived rejection before, and he could do so again. Everything would be fine.

\--

Duck was already regretting his impulsiveness when he showed up at the campground that night. He’d been grocery shopping, and seen a display of fresh flowers, and they’d reminded him of Indrid, even though they weren’t really anything - or maybe they were? No idea.

Anyway, he’d bought Indrid flowers.

Duck got out of the car, bouquet in hand, and walked across the campground. The windows of the Winnebago had been papered over, but he could see the light inside, and the silhouette of Indrid moving around - no. That wasn’t Indrid. Those shoulders were too broad to be Indrid, too broad to be  _ human,  _ and getting broader - a pair of wings outstretched.

Duck turned on his heel and got back into the car. 

Mothman. That was the only thought in his head. Everything made sense now: Indrid’s unshakeable confidence about mothman anatomy, living in the middle of nowhere, West Virginia - didn’t Indrid live in  _ Point Pleasant?  _ \- when he could live anywhere. Indrid Cold was boyfriends with the actual mothman. 

Of course he’d never settle for Duck Newton, and of course he couldn’t tell Duck the real reason why. And Duck had  _ kissed  _ him! Twice, now! He could only hope that the mothman wasn’t the jealous type. 

Duck groaned. When he got home he put the flowers in a vase of water on the dining room table -  _ someone  _ should enjoy them, at least - and told Annie sternly not to try eating them. 

“You’re not secretly having an affair with the mothman, are you?” he said as he petted her. She did not respond.

Mothman followed him even into dreams. The gray silhouette he’d seen, filled out with dark brown feathers, standing at his bedside, stroking a cool claw over Duck’s cheek. “I heard you were touching my boyfriend,” the mothman said, in the voice Duck had always given him before Indrid’s flooded his head, even now more playful than threatening.

“I’m sorry,” said Duck. “I didn’t know.”

“Oh, I’m not upset,” said the mothman. “You didn’t know. And he is very pretty, isn’t he?”

“Uh-huh.” The mothman’s claws tightened in Duck’s hair.

“And he’s said some  _ very  _ nice things about you. Which is why I’m here, actually. I came to see what all the fuss was about, on the off chance you had a kiss for me as well.”

“Yes.” If the mothman was interested, he would give a lot more than a kiss. And the mothman was bending down now, so close Duck could feel the warmth of his body and smell the forest on his feathers, and - and Duck woke up.

There was no mothman in his bedroom, just the moon out the window over the trees. Duck’s heart fluttered in his chest like a moth against a lampshade, and he groaned into his pillow in despair.

Indrid showed up the next day at Duck’s apartment just like usual with a stack of pages. Did he talk about writing with the mothman? Did he write sex scenes with the mothman looking over his shoulder, cock pressed up against Indrid’s back? Were any of those sex scenes based on things he’d actually  _ done?  _

“Indrid, can I ask you something?” 

Indrid stiffened. Annie had jumped up onto the couch next to him, begging for pets. “Yes?”

“I know you’re not real into divulging personal information, but I’d really appreciate it if you could be honest with me. About this one thing. I don’t need to know about your family or your past or any of that.”

Indrid was looking at him very warily now. “What do you want to know?”

Duck took a deep breath. “Is mothman your boyfriend?”

“No.” Indrid smiled, looking relieved. “Mothman is not my boyfriend. Why would you think that?”

Duck ran a hand through his hair. “Because. I just thought. I saw -”

“What did you see?”

“I was passing by the campground last night and I saw through the window of the Winnebago.”

“Ah.” Indrid fidgeted with his pen, spinning it between his fingers. “You are correct that mothman is not just a myth. But we are not…  _ involved,  _ in that way.” 

“Alright. I… thank you for your honesty.”

Indrid took a deep breath and set his notes down on the coffee table. “I’ve really enjoyed visiting all the date spots in Kepler with you. It’s a shame Tristan and Iseult can’t.”

Duck nodded numbly. 

“What if Iseult had a way of magically disguising himself as a human?”

Duck was too busy with  _ not fucking the mothman  _ to really process what Indrid was saying. “Honestly, I think that’d be too complicated to introduce this late in the game. That’s so much more magic than we’ve shown him using.”

“Right,” said Indrid quietly. “Of course.”

\--

He probably should have just told him. There were _so many_ futures where Duck figured it out; so many, in fact, that when Duck changed the subject and moved on, Indrid was so surprised that he didn’t press further. 

And for the next week and a half, it was like nothing had happened. They worked on the book, finishing several dragon sex scenes and introducing Tristan to Iseult’s varyingly imperious family members and even a dragon wedding.

On the day they sent Joseph their draft, Indrid dressed in his most revealing tank top and sat with his legs spread on Duck’s bed, allowing his gaze to linger openly on Duck’s lips, Duck’s chest. And Duck didn’t do anything. Didn’t touch him, or ask him to dinner, or suggest spending time together after their work was over in any way.

Indrid went home vaguely horny and ruminating on all the times he himself could have made a move and didn’t. And so he made a plan. 

\--

There was a half-mile loop through the woods behind Duck’s apartment complex, mostly for the benefit of the dog-walkers, but Duck made it a habit to go for a stroll in the evenings as well. Today he didn’t get out until the sky was already purple with sunset, and the trees cast the path into deep shadow. He kept his eyes on the ground as he went, not wanting to trip, until a light ahead of him tinted the mulch red.

Duck looked up and into a pair of glowing red eyes. He’d reached the midpoint of the loop, the most remote place where there was a wooden bench with a plaque dedicating it to some dead former resident. And on that bench,  _ posing,  _ lounging on his side with one knee up, was a humanoid figure with enormous wings. 

“Good evening,” said the mothman.

“Uh, hi,” said Duck. He was fairly certain he wasn’t dreaming this time.

The mothman swung his legs off the bench and stood, his glossy feathers shining in what little light there was. “Such a handsome human you are,” he murmured.

“Guh,” said Duck. The mothman towered over him, the muscle in his chest and half-spread wings on full display, but Duck was not afraid.

“Might I ask your name?”

“Duck. It’s - it’s a nickname.”

“Duck,” echoed the mothman, and there was something about his  _ voice,  _ about the way he said Duck’s name… but now his cool claws were enveloping Duck’s hand and raising it to his lips for a kiss.

Duck couldn’t tear his eyes away from the mothman’s otherworldly gaze. “Why are you doing this?” 

The mothman cocked his head. “Because I find you very attractive, and I’d like to get to... know you better.” His voice was low and sultry, befitting a Casanova emerged from the shadows.

Duck wanted the mothman to pin him to a tree with those muscular arms and rail him into next week. But even more than that, he wanted… he wanted Indrid. “I’m real flattered,” Duck said. Indrid hadn’t said anything about his plans, but presumably he was going back to Point Pleasant. Duck might never see him again. “And I’m  _ absolutely  _ going to regret this later, but... I can’t.” 

The mothman dropped his hand and stepped backward instantly. 

“I’ve got feelings for someone else, see, and it just - it wouldn’t feel right, even though you are  _ super  _ hot and if you’d showed up a month ago I would have been  _ so  _ down, it’s just -”

“Yes of course you do, I understand, so sorry for disturbing you -” The mothman blathered on as he stumbled backwards, not looking where he was going, and with a surprised little chirp his wing caught on the edge of the bench and sent him tumbling backwards to land on his ass in the leaf litter. 

A beat’s pause. “Just - just go, please,” said the mothman despondently, cocooning himself in his wings.

Duck cautiously advanced. Something about the mothman’s body language, now that he wasn’t seductive and confident, looked familiar, something about the way he bent his head, and again that  _ voice  _ \- “Indrid?”


	5. Chapter 5

The mothman peeked over the top of his wings.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” Several things crashed into place all at once. “It’s been you this whole time?”

“Yes,” said Indrid miserably. “It’s me.”

Duck got down on his knees and hugged him so hard they both rolled over backwards, pressing his lips to Indrid’s strange insectoid mouth. 

“Mph!” Indrid gripped Duck’s shoulders and looked him in the face. “But - but you just said you didn’t want -”

“I want  _ you.  _ I wasn’t going to fuck the mothman because I was in too deep for Indrid fucking Cold.”

Indrid blinked. “Oh.”

Duck buried his face in Indrid’s feathered shoulder and started laughing, suddenly overcome with the ridiculousness of the situation. “What was your  _ plan?” _

“Um,” said Indrid, sounding embarrassed. Duck had no idea how he hadn’t recognized his voice before, maybe because he hadn’t often heard Indrid speaking in such a sultry tone. Hopefully he’d get more of a chance in the future.

“Okay, okay.” Duck sat back, straddling Indrid’s lap. “I have questions. If that’s alright.”

Indrid lay back, resting his head on the ground, top set of arms folded behind his head. “Ask away.”

“Are you…  _ the  _ mothman, or  _ a  _ mothman? Are there others?”

“Uhh,” said Indrid, making a so-so gesture. “On this planet? I’m the only one.”

Duck touched the ruff of thick fur around Indrid’s neck, thinking back to everything Indrid’s books had said about mothman. “Oh my god. Can you actually lay eggs?”

“What?”

“Like in _Mated in Monongahela.”_ They looked at each other for a moment. “I’m just - I’m just wondering, no real reason.”

Duck felt claws against his hips, then, and Indrid’s voice was low and seductive again. “Does my sweet human want me to lay my eggs in him?”

“Hngh.”

Indrid looked at Duck curiously. “You’re attracted to me like this.”

“Uh, hell yeah I am? Firstly I’d be attracted to you no matter what you looked like, because you’re you, but also…” Duck gestured at Indrid’s body. “Look at yourself!” Indrid looked down. “Plus, and I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s this one author who’s written a lot of very hot mothman erotica over the years, and I’m a  _ big  _ fan.”

Indrid squirmed. “I’ve never - um. I’ve never actually been with a human in this body before.”

“D’you want that to change?”

“Um,” said Indrid. “Hold on.” And then he was frantically patting at the ground behind him, pulling his red sunglasses out from where they’d been buried underneath a layer of leaves, and jamming them back onto his face. Suddenly he was human again, and Duck was sitting there straddling his jeans-clad hips.

No sooner had he done it than there was a crunch of mulch and a sharp bark of laughter, and Duck whipped his head around. Leo Tarkesian had just come around the bend and was standing there with his mouth open. “Duck Newton, is that you?”

“Uh,” said Duck. “Hey, Leo.”

“Gonna introduce me to your friend?”

Indrid eased Duck off his lap and got to his feet, brushing the dirt off his clothes. Duck reached over and pulled a leaf out of his hair. 

“Uh, Indrid, this is Leo, my neighbor. Leo, this is Indrid, my… uh.”

Leo laughed and shook Indrid’s hand. “You’ve been around the store a few times, haven’t you?”

Indrid nodded. “It’s nice to learn your name.”

“Alright, well, good to officially meet you too, I guess. I’ll let you get back to… whatever it is you were doing. Might want to find a better place to do it, though.” Leo winked, and went on his way.

Even in human form Indrid was easily tall enough to pin Duck to a tree with a hand over his shoulder. “Now, where were we?”

“Come back to my place?”

“I’d be honored.”

“Great.” Duck took his hand and pulled him along the path. Yeah, he was impatient.

“Duck?” said Indrid.

“Yeah?”

“I sense that you’re likely to proposition me, and the answer is yes - I like you very much, Duck - but I was wondering - is this… just a tonight thing?”

Duck turned around. Indrid’s grip was tight on his hand. “No, this is not just a tonight thing, Indrid. I’d really like to be your boyfriend, if that’s something you’d be okay with.” 

“More than okay,” Indrid breathed, and surged forward and kissed him. Their human mouths slotted together easily, Indrid’s arms around Duck’s shoulders warm against the chill of the evening. 

Somehow they made it back inside, though it was a wonder Duck didn’t fall down the stairs with Indrid clinging to him the whole way. “You were saying something about me propositioning you?”

“Yesyesyes,” said Indrid, lavishing Duck’s neck with open-mouthed kisses. “How do you want me?”

“What would you have done if I’d said yes back in the woods? Now I’m curious about the real-life mothman seduction experience.”

“Hm. Well, I could have pushed you up against a tree and yanked your pants down just enough for me to get a taste.”

“Just a taste?” Duck teased.

“Maybe a little more than that. Haven’t you heard that most humans who encounter the mothman end up screaming? And then when you were limp with pleasure I could have scooped you up in my arms and flown somewhere more secluded to really take my time with you.”

“I’m a little big to be scooped up, don’t you think?” 

Indrid cocked his head, and then bent over, one arm around Duck’s back and another under his knees, and lifted him easily. “You were saying, little human?”

“Fuck, you’re strong.” He literally couldn’t remember the last time someone had been able to pick him up this easily. “Wait.”

“Hm?” Indrid’s glasses had slid halfway down his nose, but he seemed too distracted looking at Duck to notice.

“Are you actually sixty-eight?”

“No.” Indrid blinked. Then he set Duck down on the sofa and stepped back, pushing his glasses back up to cover his eyes again. “Were you talking to Joseph about me?”

“Before you came to Kepler. I promise I won’t tell him or anyone else anything about you being mothman.” Indrid seemed to relax at that. “He, uh, he said your license lists your birth year as 1953, but you definitely don’t look that old.”

Indrid pulled his driver’s license out of his wallet. “So it does,” he said. “I should probably get that changed. I haven’t gotten new documents in a while.”

“So, uh. How old  _ are  _ you?”

“The difference in calendars makes it difficult to keep track precisely, but I am somewhere in the vicinity of three hundred and fifty.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Is that… is that a problem? I understand that’s considered considerably older for a human than it is for my kind.”

“Unless you’re fucking Methuselah, it is!”

“I’m… sorry?”

“C’mere?” Duck opened his arms, and Indrid sat down on the couch next to him and allowed himself to be hugged. “It’s fine,” Duck said into Indrid’s shoulder. “I just need a minute to wrap my head around all this.”

“I admit, I’m a little curious what Joseph’s theories are about me.”

“He thinks you escaped a cult and murdered your dad.”

“ _ What?” _

“He’s also very concerned about how much you pay in ATM fees.”

Indrid laughed. “That’s Joseph for you.” 

“Yeah.” For a moment they just sat there, holding each other. Finally Indrid broke the silence. 

“That reminds me. I should probably call my dad.”

Duck started laughing and pulled him in for another kiss.

\--

It only made sense for Indrid to renew his lease at the RV park for another month, so he could work on revisions in person. The opportunity to sit in Duck’s lap kissing him senseless was a secondary benefit. (It had been a week, and they hadn’t done any revising.)

Instead Duck tugged Indrid’s hair, already tousled from Duck running his hands through it, to get him to tilt his head back. “I always wondered why Joseph never made you do an audiobook,” Duck said, and kissed a line from Indrid’s collarbone to his chin.

“Hm?” Indrid was already moving his hips needily. 

“You have such a nice voice.”

“Thank you,” said Indrid, slightly awkwardly, still unused to compliments. 

“And so I was wondering, since you have such a nice voice, if you might be willing to… read to me and let me get off on it?”

“Oh,” said Indrid. “ _ Oh.  _ That’s where you were going with this.”

“If you don’t want to-”

“Oh, no, I do.” Indrid took hold of Duck’s chin to kiss him properly. “Is there anything in particular you want me to read?”

“I’ll get it.” Duck got up and Indrid followed him into the bedroom, where he pulled a book off the shelf and rifled through it. “Here,” he said, handing it over once he’d found the page he was looking for.

“You’ve thought about this,” said Indrid. The book was one of Indrid’s own, where the mothman dates an artist. “Are you going to make me do the voices?” 

Duck sat down on the bed and started pulling his pants off. “If that’s an option, hell yeah I’m making you do the voices.”

Indrid groaned, sitting down on the bed as well. “I regret asking.”

“Did I say you could sit on the bed?”

Indrid leaped up. “No, ah, where do you want me?”

Duck considered making Indrid kneel on the floor, but he did want to see his face. “That chair. I can’t have you in arm’s-reach of me, I don’t want you getting tempted.”

Indrid sat down where he was instructed, the chair Duck normally used to stack clean laundry. “Thank you. Shall I start?”

“Yes. You’re not allowed to touch yourself or me, but if you’re good I’ll reward you.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” Indrid cleared his throat, waited for Duck to get settled. When he started reading, his voice fit easily around the words, businesslike and familiar. “ _ ‘It was late afternoon, and the sun was coming through the venetian blinds and pooling on the worn wooden floor.’  _ Oh, I should have -” 

Duck looked up to see Indrid rifling through the bedside table and coming up with a pen. “Hey! Don’t write in my book!”

“It's  _ my  _ book,” Indrid pointed out. “And I just saw something I ought to have changed.”

“If you stop reading again I’m not letting you cum for the rest of the night.”

“Alright, alright.” Indrid started again, and Duck put his hand between his legs, letting Indrid’s voice wash over him. The plot of the book involved a painter, Claude, who rented a cabin in the West Virginia wilderness while on sabbatical from his teaching job at a French art school, trying to break out of his rut of painting vineyards and rolling countryside with a new landscape. Mothman sex was punctuated by academic politics and answering endless emails from colleagues and students back in France.

Indrid kept his promise to do the voices. For Claude he spoke in a light French accent, surprisingly good, and for the mothman he tilted his voice just a little deeper, a little raspier - the way he’d sounded when he’d  _ been  _ the mothman, Duck realized.

He was just working the first finger into himself when Indrid got to the good part: nude mothman modeling. Motheling? Anyway.

_ Claude took his time in posing his subject. He started out standing behind his easel with the mothman lying on the couch in front of him. “Sit up against the pillow a little more? Yes, just like that. Spread your legs? Good. Perfect.” Then he came closer and combed his fingers through the feathers on the mothman’s wings, making sure they lay just so to catch the light. The attention and the touch on his sensitive wings was making the mothman’s cock start to emerge from its sheath, and Claude knelt to lick delicately at the tip. _

_ “Please,” said the mothman, gripping Claude’s shoulders. _

_ Claude pulled back. “Ah ah ah.” He pressed the mothman’s wrists against the cushion above his head. “Keep these here, or else.” _

_ The mothman whimpered but obeyed.  _

_ “You are always at your most gorgeous when you are desperate,” Claude commented, and licked a stripe up the mothman’s cock. Then he straightened the feathers on his lower belly as well. “Can you stay hard for me, or do you need me to let you touch yourself?”  _

_ “I can do it,” the mothman said. _

_ “Good boy.” Then Claude returned to his easel and picked up his palette and brush. “You are  _ magnificent,”  _ Claude said absently as he painted. The mothman could not see what he was doing, only the blank back of the easel and the motion of his arm.  _

_ “How much longer?” said the mothman after a while. _

_ “Patience, dearest. After I’m done with this I’m all yours, you can fuck me as hard as you like, breed me full for you.” _

_ At the word  _ breed  _ a trickle of precum escaped the mothman’s cock.  _

_ “Oh,” Claude cooed. “So perfect.” _

Duck made a noise then that prompted Indrid to look up from the book. “Is that how you want to be treated?” Duck said breathlessly. He could see that Indrid was already hard. “Want someone to take you apart and tell you how pretty you look and you don’t get to come?”

“Maybe a little,” Indrid admitted. “I’d like to cum at some point.”

_ Finally Claude put down his palette. “Done.” The mothman leaped up and threw him over his shoulder. “At least let me wash the paint off my hands,” Claude said, laughing. _

_ “Fine.” The mothman set him down in front of the bathroom sink and knelt behind him, yanking his pants and underwear down. He chirped in happy surprise to see the base of a plug, wrapped his claws around it and rocked it in and out so Claude spread his legs and leaned against the sink.  _

_ As Claude scrubbed under his fingernails the mothman worked the plug out and replaced it with his tongue. Finally Claude shut the faucet off and dried his hands.  _

_ The mothman pulled back. “Should I take you here, or in bed?” he mused. _

_ “Bed, please, I’m not as young as I was.” _

_ “Alright.” The mothman picked him up again, carried him into the bedroom and set him gently on the bed. “Let it never be said that I don’t take good care of you.” _

_ “Oh, you always do.” Claude positioned himself on his hands and knees and felt the mothman’s claws dragging down his back, claiming him, marking him as his. “Please fuck me.” _

Duck made a mental note as he came, fucking himself with three fingers, to get Indrid to fuck him in moth form as soon as possible. 

_ “I’ll have to paint you again, I didn’t capture just how gorgeous you are. Pretty, needy moth.” _

_ The mothman smiled. “Same modeling fee as last time?” _

“Get up here,” said Duck, and Indrid happily threw the book aside and himself into Duck’s arms. Duck smoothed the hair back from Indrid’s forehead. “Pretty, needy moth?”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yes, Indrid, whatever you want, just let me know.”

“Mph,” said Indrid, unwilling to take his lips off Duck’s to request anything more. But he was grinding hard on Duck’s thigh, and so Duck thrust his leg up against him, eliciting a delicious whimper.

“Needy thing,” Duck teased when Indrid stopped kissing him long enough for a few gasping breaths. 

“Just hearing you, Duck, it does things to me you wouldn’t believe.”

“Yeah?” Duck teased, stroking his hands gently through Indrid’d hair. “I’m all yours.” Duck was so surprised it took him a moment to realize what was happening when Indrid’s thighs tensed for a moment and then he went boneless. It seemed Indrid had enjoyed reading to him almost as much as Duck enjoyed being read to.

“I didn’t think I’d have to bring a spare pair of pants,” Indrid mumbled into Duck’s chest.

“You can borrow some of mine,” said Duck. “Remind you who you belong to.”

Indrid lifted his head and kissed him open-mouthed and lazy. “I’m all yours.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! hit me up on tumblr @bellafarallones


End file.
